Apple CEO Tim Cook 'Can't Wait' for Employees to Return to In-Person Work

[jerryk]

Yeesh. As a developer who works remotely, I can't fathom how people think this is still a good idea.

If you ever have an issue with a library or device you use, then you understand why it is better to have the author down the hall. Where you can go down and discuss how you need or expect it to work. This is especially true if you are writing driver-level code and having issues interfacing with hardware and meet performance requirements.

 

[Apple Freak]

Pull an Elon Musk, come to Texas, we're open!!

They just paid $5Bn for that campus, never gonna happen. Although they do have offices in Austin.

 

[clive27]

Hiccups don’t happen once. The jet stream is disrupted by climate change and is moving south on a more regular basis.

I think he referred to the power outage as a hiccup. Texas has learned a lesson and created a bunch of laws to prevent this, including weatherizing the power stations to survive the coldest imaginable weather.

 

[Beau10]

I've been remote 7 of the last 9 years I've worked, and I worked in offices 15 years prior to that span.

Even when remote, I've at times worked out of an co-working space close to home. Working in the office can suck for 3 reasons:

1) Commute - if it's more than 30 minutes total daily, it's just too much. You don't get paid for that time, and traffic sucks. Most people in tech hub type areas are losing 1-2 hours of their day 5 days a week.
2) Corrosive office environment - I've been in wonderful offices and terrible. I'd rather just be remote than chance it.
3) Office space itself - if you work in a cool environment, that's awesome. If you work in a de facto office park, no thanks.

A cool/fun/hip office environment, close to home, with fun/energetic co-workers and no political bs? Sure, sign me up. It's rare though.

 

[clive27]

well, i used to keep my heat off from the time i went to bed to the the i came home from work which was half a day. now it's running all day long. i'm also running more electricity i didn't before because i wasn't here. i'm also washing more dishes and cooking more meals because i don't go out to lunch. cooking for one is less efficient than cooking for a lot of people. i'm also walking significantly less because i literally go nowhere, some days i never even get off my back. i know i should exercise but my activity has been linked to things i had to do like walk to work. i used to walk to work so my commute carbon footprint was 0. so i'm definitely using up more resources than before. the time i save on commuting i'm wasting on cooking and washing more dishes and generally keeping the house clean because it gets messy and dirty throughout they day. my sofa is getting wear and tare. my house feels dirty all the time because again, i'm eating lunch here and cooking it and i don't have time to clean it during work so it sits there till i'm off and then i have to cook again.

there is also the feeling that i live in an office. if my partner is in a meeting, i am too in a meeting and vice versa. so after 1 year of this, i feel more like i live at work than i feel like i work at home.

like i can understand people that had +20 min commutes. but a lot of us don't.

it's also no more efficient for actual work, but i'm a designer and work in a collaborative field. getting a meeting started is difficult because everyone seems to be in a meeting all the time now and just starting one wastes time.

like i need to go over a design with 3 people. back in the office, i would just walk up to them and be like "looks at this *hit" and they be like i like it or i hate it.
now i have to be like "can we go over this", and they'll be like "let me check if so and so is available" so then they'll be like "how about in 10 minutes". 10 minutes later we finally connect except so and so is not picking up so we ping them "hey so and so, are you at your computer we are meeting right now". so then we wait 5 more minutes and finally we are all there. these have been the interactions every day not just in house but with client meetings and they waste so much time.

There's an application called Outlook that lets you choose a meeting time with everyone's availability. Try it. It's awesome.

 

[macsareveryinteresting]

Well if I was Tim Cook, I would want to see my employees.

 

[ian87w]

It's ironic that a huge tech company cannot shape their working environment to be functional while being remote. I thought the interactions were just a Facetime call away.

I'm sure the need to go to office is mainly due to the secrecy. I think we had news last year that it is difficult for some Apple employees to work remotely due to the secrecy nature of some of their projects (maybe with some assets only accessible in the office).

 

[ian87w]

Well if I was Tim Cook, I would want to see my employees.

If it were me, I wouldn't. I mean why? If they do their job well and meet their KPIs, why should I? And if they don't, I trust their managers, and their managers' managers, to do their job to make sure they do. All I need is to do is to check with the top level executives to be accountable for the performance of their divisions.

Why should the top CEO of one of the richest tech company in the world, act like a foreman in a factory? He would probably have better things to do.

 

[Santiago]

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion...

Human chemistry shows we are social beings. Evidence like the fact that mental health issues arise during isolation supports this. For example, infants that aren't held have higher rates of developmental issues. Virtual connections are no substitute. One can debate causation vs correlation, but increased use of social media is found with statistical connection to depression and other mental health problems.

No one said you can't remote 100%, but evidence shows the harm long hours of isolation can create. Some professions demand such conditions and I feel far more sympathy for them.

Or, maybe once the pandemic is under control, we can keep working from home and then hang out in person with our actual friends?

 

[BigMcGuire]

No, Apple kept all their employees. Even continued to pay them while not working at all for the first part of the pandemic.

Confirmed. I asked an Apple Genius right after our local Apple Store opened - he confirmed, they got paid the entire time. They were encouraged to do training (virtual) etc.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Working remote has been very nice. Not spending time in traffic has been amazing - saved thousands on fuel. I'm glad our work is talking about a hybrid approach possibly too.

I went back to the office a few times over the last few months and was absolutely surprised at how much time I used to spend socializing. At home, on the computer, I can socialize with an employee, talk to someone else, and do something on the side at the same time. In person, when someone's talking to you, you got to give them your full attention. This results in a bit of lost productivity vs 100% online. That said, 100% remote makes training new employees very difficult. They can't ask for help as readily and it's easy to get left behind.

I'm very pro remote work but I live pretty far from the office and at my level, I talk to a lot of people so being able to work and talk to several people at once has had massive boosts to my productivity.

 

[spotlight07]

If we all have to go back to an office hopefully we can keep sweatpants as a thing.

 

[ericwn]

Grandpa Cook is so boring. He’s definitely not one of the crazy ones.

So the crazy ones are those who wanna stay at home in your book? That’s the new rebel and square peg?

 

[Tech198]

"We have realized and learned that there are some things that are perfectly great to do virtually across Zoom or WebEx, whatever, or FaceTime, whatever you might have. So I think it'll be, I'll call it a hybrid environment [for] a little bit.""

That may be true, but how many will quickly retract this when more get hacked as a result? I think the writings on the wall for that one.

The only reason for saying that, is ibeing more convenient.. not necessarily the right decision. I'd be still going to work regardless just to be sure 100%, we are not just setting ourselves up for being more targets *because* we are more exposed as we previously were. (as in more exposed onine, we wouldn't have been if we were speaking face to face in a office)

I get e should adapt to what's right and if it can be done, why not from the comfort, but are we making the right move, is the issue.

 

[Sorig]

Of course the boss would say that! Lol.

 

[kjvmartin]

Offices need to go the way of the rotary phone. It's pointless for jobs that don't need a special piece of large equipment or machinery to require any kind of in person availability. This has been the best work year of my life in my government agency which normally kills a forest a month on reams of paper. Can't fathom why we'd go back. What will I do for 8 hours in a box?

I have 3 kids, including 1 with special needs and 1 with severe special needs. We have been able to flex so much getting them in and out of different therapies and appointments. Feedings. Diapers. Unpopular opinion, but I believe US society took a wrong turn when it started requiring dual incomes to raise a family. This has been a right turn into allowing parents to be parents again. So much freedom. I have actual motivation to work hard because when I finish my work I am not staring at fluorescent lights waiting for the clock to wind down. None of that matters because we have a building and need go there to push buttons on the keyboard?

 

[bousozoku]

Cupertino is a mess and is not designed for the amount of traffic on 280.. Not only that but housing in Cupertino for a 2 bedroom apt is from $3,000- $4,000 a month. Ive spent upwards of an hour plus getting from downtown San Jose to Cupertino. Yeah, I can see that innovation can be obtained when you are next to others.

It's still better than El Camino Real.

You're missing the 3 hour commute from Central Valley to Santa Clara County, I-205 to I-580 to I-680 or I-880. Loads of people have moved out here to be able to afford a house on what they were paying for apartments.

 

[Black Belt]

Open offices are a scourge that are just for oppression. Tim Cook doesn’t work in an open office. They are horrible and an assault on privacy. U you ok want to work in a group, grab a conference room. When you have work to get done you need privacy and quiet.

 

[Black Belt]

Plus I have a far superior home office setup than the crap they provide. My internet is faster, my computer is faster, i have a comfortable hair that fits me, I have a 49” monitor on my real craftsman oak desk. Plus I don’t have idiots cooking tuna in the microwave or burning popcorn.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Plus I have a far superior home office setup than the crap they provide. My internet is faster, my computer is faster, i have a comfortable hair that fits me, I have a 49” monitor on my real craftsman oak desk. Plus I don’t have idiots cooking tuna in the microwave or burning popcorn.

I'd venture to say that most people don't have this luxury. I didn't either until Covid hit.

 

[Abazigal]

Yeesh. As a developer who works remotely, I can't fathom how people think this is still a good idea.

It is when your products hinge on close collaboration between the hardware, software and service teams.

I have had my share of WFH last year when school closed. It had its perks, but I still find there is just no replacement for getting a few people into a room and knocking heads together to brainstorm over a project. Maybe I am just old-fashioned like that.

 

[1258186]

So the crazy ones are those who wanna stay at home in your book? That’s the new rebel and square peg?

You must be very young. Steve Jobs famously referred to the “crazy ones” as people who inspired him to start Apple. The crazy ones being people who believed they could change the world and actually did it. People like Albert Einstein and Ghandi.

It was famously used as part of Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign in 1997 that launched the original iMac. It has remained a popular phrase ever since.

I assume you’ve heard of Think Different? I hope so because it’s been widely credited with saving the company from bankruptcy.

 

[Abazigal]

You must be very young. Steve Jobs famously referred to the “crazy ones” as people who inspired him to start Apple. The crazy ones being people who believed they could change the world and actually did it. People like Albert Einstein and Ghandi.

It was used as a tagline for Apple’s advertising in 1997 and has remained a popular phrase ever since.

Those who are rebels turn eventually into part of the system or the system itself. Those who go against the establishment eventually become part of establishment or replace it entirely.

Every revolution—political, cultural, technological—in the history of the world has been like this.

 

[1258186]

Those who are rebels turn eventually into part of the system or the system itself. Those who go against the establishment eventually become part of establishment or replace it entirely.

Every revolution—political, cultural, technological—in the history of the world has been like this.

True and many people would argue that Apple has become what Steve Jobs despised all those years ago when he took a selfie outside the IBM building. A safe conservative company who doesn’t take risks and is run by corporate suits. It’s debatable but they are clearly not the same company they were 10 years ago when Steve sadly passed away.

 

[ArPe]

I think he referred to the power outage as a hiccup. Texas has learned a lesson and created a bunch of laws to prevent this, including weatherizing the power stations to survive the coldest imaginable weather.

Lets see. But it is always amazing when people can prep for Jesus coming down on a flying horse/cloud/UFO but they can’t prep for climate change.